Michael Faraday (1791-1867) is an everlasting wonder of the scientific
world. His father was a blacksmith, and his education was limited to
attendance at Sunday school, but in a lifetime of intellectual labor he
transformed himself, most professionals agree, into the greatest
experimental scientist who ever lived. He induced the first electric
current, developed the first dynamo and with it the possibility of
electric power, created the science of electrochemistry and with it a
primary implement of modern industry, blasted the first big breach in
the Newtonian universe and laid down...